Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (36 page)

“What was it?” Thomas asked, afraid of the answer.

“When I killed Lejka…” Bolswaithe said, “I believe I experienced...pleasure.”

Dreams

Thomas had to sleep.

Seven months might have passed for the world, but he had gone directly from the Namtarii to the Aesir and back without resting at all. After leaving the wristpadd containing Bolswaithe on a special dock to re-charge, Thomas went straight to his room and tried unsuccessfully to take a shower. He turned the knobs, but no water came out.

He got into bed and tried to sleep.

He tossed and turned, but it took him a long time to fall asleep. Too many thoughts occupied his mind, too many things to be worried about. Elise and the Doctor at the forefront, with the girl in the Aesir’s Hall close behind.

Who was she? Why had she sent the wasp to sting him? She seemed to know him, and he believed that Odin and Frigg knew him too, or Lord Odin wouldn’t have asked them to keep quiet, as if trying to protect, or better yet, not to reveal anything to him that might alter his decisions.

The Norns were at the center of those questions. According to Ratatosk, the Norns were more powerful than the Aesir, and they could weave or see destiny. But in his case, they hadn’t been sure what to do because he was connected to the Oracle, an even more powerful force.

Still, the Norns did see something. He knew they had screwed with him, but why?

Their powers altered time, but they hadn’t sent him back in time. Just slowed him to allow seven months to pass and then gave him all this time to catch up and do what he was supposed to do.

But catch up to what? And do what?

At some point his mind became too tired of trying to make sense, so he drifted into sleep, and the nightmare came.

It began with a sense of tranquility.

The memories Mneme had expanded in his mind filled his dreams, but he wasn’t seeing them as he had in the Halls of Remembrance.

He was living them in utter darkness.

His body swayed from side to side as a gentle warmth enveloped him. Then a sharp move and a muffled hit on his head, pain mixed with alarm, he opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t. He became disoriented as he fell.

The sound of something big breaking up—the cracking of wood, the rush of water, the sound of bodies splashing in the sea.

He was underwater.

Screams and yells muffled by the water, voices in fear and pain. The warmth slowly draining from him as it was replaced by coldness.

Hunger.

A rhythmic sound filled his mind, a heartbeat. First strong and fast, the slowing down, the seconds passed like hours as the beating slowed and the heartbeats grew ever apart until it stopped completely. Fear became anguish as the rhythm slowed down, then the anguish was slowly replaced with loss of feeling, of awareness as it stopped completely.

He was alone, but he wasn’t scared anymore.

It was a peaceful numbness as he drifted away into death.

He felt a jolt, and he was pulled back from numbness. A faint heartbeat resumed, faster and faster.

Bright piercing light replaced the darkness. Sharp cold burned his skin, water spouted from his lungs as he tried to scream. He opened his eyes and saw two silhouettes standing over him, reaching for him.

A squat, horned head above broad shoulders and a flash of dark armor.

A thin body, with an unnatural mouth clicking away, reached for him. A four-fingered hand that he had thought belonged to a faun, but now realized it was also covered in armor. 

Instead of fingers it had talons.  Sharp, hard, and cruel.

He felt the cold hand touch him, and immediately his fear became replaced by a strong sense of happiness as the creature with the squat head leaned closer.

He couldn’t see very well, but what he had seen in the dream woke him with a scream.

A dark, unfathomable eye peering down at him.

The eye of a Wraith.

“What’s going on?” Ratatosk slapped him gently with a paw; the squirrel was sitting on top of his chest.

“I’m okay,” Thomas said, sitting up in the bed. “Just a nightmare.” 

“I’ll get you water.” Ratatosk took off toward the stash of supplies the Mansion staff had set up for Thomas.

Thomas stood and walked to the mirror. He was covered in sweat. He tried again to turn the sink knob, but slammed his fist in frustration when he remembered that the water wouldn’t come out.

Each time he had recalled the memory Mneme had unlocked he had gained a little more knowledge about what had happened and relived it a little bit. But in the dream time he had gone beyond—he had lived it and seen who held his parents. And it wasn’t the Fauns.

It was the Wraith.

He was sure of it.

He needed to save them.

Resolutions

“What am I supposed to do now, Doctor?” Thomas sat by the Doctor's bed in the Medical Ward. The Doctor had been assigned a bed in the ultra-sophisticated hospital ward of Pervagus Mansion while he recovered from his current health crisis.

“The Doctor says he has bad days and worse weeks, and he’s currently in one of his worse weeks,” Bolswaithe had told Thomas before he went to sleep. Thomas had left Bolswaithe in the dock recharging while he visited the Doctor; he didn't want Bolswaithe to hear what he was going to say about him. He had a great excuse for leaving him though. Working at such a high speed drained the batteries very quickly, and Bolswaithe didn't want to risk a reboot of the wristpadd.

Thomas wasn't a doctor, but he had been in a hospital enough times to know that Doctor Franco was very ill. Tubes snaked under the bed covers, and more than one I.V. line ran up his arms. The Doctor had a breathing mask over his mouth and nose, but Thomas saw the bump of a tube that must be connected to his trachea. The ever-present cravat at the Doctor's neck had been replaced with heavy bandages.

Mrs. Pianova and Killjoy were sitting in a corner of the room, and an attendant was replacing the I.V. bags. The scene was surreal, like taken from a movie. A great man on his deathbed, his family and friends surrounding him while they waited for him to breathe his last. Frozen, like a picture in a magazine.

Thomas knew better than to check the Doctor's arms under the covers. He remembered how they had curled up after Isaurus’s attack, and he didn't feel capable of taking another jolt like the one he had with Elise. Bolswaithe had told him that the Doctor had just come out from an extensive surgery and his life was on the line. He had read the Doctor’s chart by the bed, but even as he understood everything he had read, he had no point of reference or knowledge of what he was reading, so he didn’t know if the Doctor’s condition was stable or not.

“Bolswaithe thinks he might be...” Thomas said while pulling out a little paper where he had written Bolswaithe's exact words. “...um, 'Showing deviant behavior that could develop into a psychopathy for displaying sadistic tendencies whose motivation for killing are largely based on psychological gratification.'” He took in a long breath and waved the little paper. “I asked him to repeat that five times, Doctor. It's actually Bolswaithe's talk for: ‘I might become a serial killer.’ He actually thinks that he might grow to enjoy killing people.”

The number on one of the screens suddenly changed. Thomas was still moving incredibly fast in comparison to the world and, according to Bolswaithe's calculations, he still had the equivalent of five days to go before slowing down to normal time. Thomas sighed. How he wished he could actually talk with any of them. “So, you're dying, Elise is well...you know,” Thomas continued. “The Guardians are in shambles, and to top it off, I might have driven Bolswaithe crazy.” Thomas paused, clenching his hands into fists. “I should have listened to what all of you tried to tell me and taken the easy road instead of doing what I wanted,” Thomas said on the verge of crying. “Maybe none of this would have happened.”

“Bullcrap!” Ratatosk yelled from behind, startling him out of his self-beating.

Thomas looked toward the door. The squirrel was standing there with his tiny arms across his chest. “What the hell do you know?” Thomas said. “How long have you been there?”

“I've been here long enough to hear most of your boo-hoo...” Ratatosk mocked by wiping a fake tear from his eye. “Since when is killing your grandfather the easy road? The easy road is what you did, and it's a load of bullcrap for you to try and convince yourself otherwise. You'd do exactly what you did if it happened again.”

“You have no idea what you're talking about.” Thomas turned his back to the squirrel.

“I've been talking to whatever's left of your metal golem when you leave him to recharge.” Ratatosk approached Thomas’s chair. “You don't want me to die of boredom, do you? He's told me everything you've done up until now. You've been wrong in many things, but not in trying to keep your grandfather safe.”

Thomas bit his lip and tried to ignore the squirrel, but Ratatosk jumped over the bed and pointed his finger at him. “I know that it is very hard not knowing what you're supposed to do with your life, but you should know already!”

“And what the hell am I supposed to do, huh?” Thomas stood up from the chair and yelled back at the squirrel. “Come on! You tell me!”

“You go out there...” Ratatosk gaze hardened, “and find the book.”

“What?” Thomas threw his arms in the air. “That's exactly why we are all screwed up! Because of that stupid book! That's why the Doctor is dying and Elise is...deformed!”

“Exactly!” Ratatosk yelled and patted Doctor Franco's bed. “This guy's here because he gave you the chance to find that book. The same with the girl! They sacrificed everything for you to find that stupid book. Your metal golem jumped out of a flying thing for the same reason! And you're here...loitering. You should be out there looking for the book now that you have time. It’s an advantage the Norns gave you and you're squandering it!”

Thomas lowered his arms; Ratatosk was right in many ways.

“I actually opened the gate for you to meet the Norns so they could take you to Aesir to get that rod. Then I took you back, so you could have all this time to find the book without any interference from your grandfather!” Ratatosk wheezed.

“Did you really?” Thomas asked.

Ratatosk twitched his whiskers. “No,” he glared at Thomas with the face of someone caught in a lie. “I just went for the golden acorn,” he said, “but it might have been predestined to happen! You are connected to the Oracle! You think anybody can find one of its signs? That anyone can have that kind of connection?”

“My gramps is connected too...” Thomas said. “He's also deciphered a sign. Two signs actually.”

“Duh!” Ratatosk hunched his shoulders as if Thomas had proven his point. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

Thomas sighed. “I wouldn't even know where to begin.”

“I'd begin by doing something about your hand there,” Ratatosk pointed at the wasp's sting. “That looks nasty.”

Thomas had already forgotten about the sting. The black veins had resolved into a fractal-like drawing, like something he had seen in computer art, and his brain had decoded the message within them once they had been complete.

“It's actually like a tattoo,” Thomas said. “Each one has a meaning.”

“Do tell, please,” Ratatosk said, centering his gaze on the back of Thomas’s hand.

“This side means
Show me
,” Thomas said, extending his hand toward Ratatosk. There weren’t any words in the design, but they contained a meaning, and 'Show me' was the most approximate his brain could decipher. After a second he turned up his hand to show the palm where another image had resolved. “And this one means:
Friend
.”

“Nahh...” Ratatosk smelled the tattoo. “
Friend
and
Show me
? Come on.”

      “Really,” Thomas said.

“That's it?”

“That's it,” Thomas said. “Nothing more.”

“It doesn't hurt anymore?”

“No.”

“Interesting...” Ratatosk said, sitting back down on the bed.

“So what’s next?” Thomas asked. The squirrel was right; he had all this time. It was better to use it than to wait for it to resolve like Bolswaithe wanted him to do. There was something strange about Bolswaithe, and not only what he had told him about becoming a serial killer. Something else was going on. Thomas felt that Bolswaithe was hiding something from him.

Ratatosk said, “If I were you, I would go looking for a sign.”

Thomas craned his neck.

“Or for your grandfather!” Ratatosk shouted. “From what the talking box told me, this place has eyes everywhere, even up in the air. I'm sure someone has seen him somewhere and you can find out.”

That actually didn't seem like a bad idea. While Gramps always knew where Thomas was, the Guardians’ surveillance had spotted him only a couple of times close to magical flux lines, flux wells, and ruins looking on his own for signs.

“He's bound to be close to a sign,” Ratatosk said as if reading Thomas’s mind. “Two birds with one stone. You check out that he's fine, and you find a sign and steal one from them as he has done to you.”

Now that was a plan to look forward to. If Thomas could steal one of the signs from Gramps they would be even, and with the one in Ethipothala, the Guardians would be ahead in the race again.

A little victory,
he thought, looking at the Doctor and making up his mind. He turned away toward the door.

“So?” Ratatosk asked.

Thomas tapped his shoulder, calling on the squirrel to perch on it. “I think I know where we can look for him,” Thomas said and Ratatosk climbed on his shoulder. The squirrel couldn't stop smiling as they left the Medical Ward.

“If the Norns can control time like this, why did they send me back after seven months?” Thomas asked.

“That one I don't know,” the squirrel said. “But knowing them, we are bound to find out sooner than later.”

Precious Time

“You’re moving too fast for even the camera in the wristpadd to detect you,” Bolswaithe told Thomas. “My capabilities are very limited right now.”